ICC Dispatch - Monday, December 15, 2008

European Union Heads of Mission to Mindanao from 15 to 17 December

ICC Cotabato City (15 December) - A group of European Union Ambassadors will visit Mindanao from 15 to 17 December, to see how EC assistance for the civilian victims of the conflict in Mindanao is being implemented. The group will include , Ambassadors Heikki Hannikainen (Finland), Christian Ludwig Weber-Lortsch (Germany), Rubens Fedele (Italy), Valeriu Gheorghe (Romania) , Luis Arias (Spain), Peter Beckingham (United Kingdom), and ) Alistair MacDonald (European Commission), as well as French Chargé d'Affaires Didier Ortolland, representing the EU Presidency. Colleagues from the Austrian, Czech, Dutch, Greek and Swedish Embassies will also take part, together with officials from the World Food Programme, led by Mr. Stephen Anderson, Country Director, and from the Department of Social Welfare and Development, led by Undersecretary Celia Yangco and Assistant Secretary Ruel Lucentales.

The group will meet with local government officials and civil society organizations and NGOs involved in peace and development in Cotabato City, Maguindanao, South Cotabato and Saranggani. The group will also visit a number of evacuation centers in Maguindanao, where assistance provided by the EC is being implemented.

The Ambassadors' visit recalls the statement issued by the European Union on 15 September, which expressed concern about the escalation of violence in Mindanao, and the growing number of civilian casualties and displaced persons. It particularly condemned the indiscriminate killing of civilians and called for those responsible to face the due process of law.

The EU statement underlined that the conflict in Mindanao can only be resolved through dialogue and called upon all parties to show restraint and genuine respect for the rule of law. The European Union urged the government of the Philippines and the MILF, who both have invested heavily in the peace process, to agree to an early return to negotiating table in order to seek a lasting solution to the conflict.

In October 2008, the European Commission agreed to provide € 7.0 million (approx PhP 440 million, at current exchange rates) to help civilian victims of the conflict in Mindanao. The assistance is used to cover emergency food distribution, drinking water and additional sanitation facilities, non-food relief items, basic shelter assistance, health care and psycho-social support, emergency support to livelihood rehabilitation and protection. Over the last decade, and including this latest assistance, the EC has now provided some € 33.0 million in assistance to persons displaced by conflict in Mindanao (including some €12.0 million in humanitarian assistance, and €21.0 million for longer-term rehabilitation) . Other EC assistance for Mindanao (development assistance, excluding purely humanitarian assistance and rehabilitation assistance) has amounted to some € 93.0 million (approx Php 6.2 billion) over the last two decades.

Taken together, the EC's humanitarian, rehabilitation and development assistance for Mindanao thus amounts to € 126.0 million (approx PhP 7.9 billion) over the last two decades. This figure does not include the assistance provided by individual EU Member States, several of whom have also contributed substantially to the development of Mindanao. (EU/PIA12)


UN officials urge local authorities in Central Mindanao to ensure uninterrupted schooling of child evacuees

ICC General Santos City (15 December) - Officials of the United Nations (UN) urged local authorities in Central Mindanao to make sure that children evacuees have an “uninterrupted” education.

Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy, special representative of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for Children in Armed Conflict (CIAC) led the delegation of UN officials from New York and those from the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) based in Manila.

The team visited Cotabato City and Maguindanao over the weekend to see the plight of children in evacuation centers.

She said authorities must find means to make sure that child evacuees are able to study like other normal school children even inside evacuation centers.

UN officials were worried about the plight of child evacuees in conflict areas in Central Mindanao as fights between government troops and the lawless Moro Islamic Liberation Front group (LMG) continue to disrupt the life of the people in the area, thus, affecting hundreds of children.

Coomaraswamy said that UN endeavors to “bring peace” so that children in conflict areas may be able “to live a truly good life.”

Datu Gumbay Piang Elementary School, one of the schools visited by UN officials has become temporary shelter of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) after renewed fighting erupted in North Cotabato and Maguindanao in August as a result of the failed signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD).

Record showed that at least 600 families have considered the school compound as temporary safe haven for their children.
Badria Kamaong Uy-Andamen, a former teacher and executive director of the Bureau of Cultural Heritage of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) expressed hope that one day peace shall be restored in the area. (PIA SarGen)


News Feature: Renegades’ Jihad Sabotages Peace, Adds to Suffering of South

ICC General Santos City (15 December) - Nine-year-old Rakma tried unsuccessfully to soothe her baby sister, restless on a makeshift hammock. Rakma’s other sisters were guarding the family’s meager possessions, heaped on the muddy ground of an evacuation camp in North Cotabato. Rakma is among the thousands who fled the mixed Muslim-Christian hamlet of Takepan after renegades from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front invaded the area.

The rogue MILF fighters invaded southern Philippine villages in early August to protest the stalled peace deal between the MILF and the government. The MILF had agreed to stop its war in exchange for expanded autonomy for Muslim areas on the island of Mindanao. The deal, initialed by both sides in June, stalled because of legal questions. Some Philippine lawmakers challenged the pact’s constitutionality, with claims that the law of the land barred creating an independent state within the state. The Supreme Court ordered the government to argue the merits of the peace pact. In other words, the peace agreement was not dead but merely under legal review.

Influenced by the anti-democratic bias of allied terrorists like the Abu Sayyaf Group and Jemaah Islamiyah, some MILF fighters spurned waiting for democratic legalities. Proving their terrorist leanings, they simply lashed out. Not only did they occupy North Cotabato villages in mid-August but later in the month, they also went on the rampage in 6 Lanao del Norte villages. About 40 civilians died in those attacks. Some were hacked to death with machetes. The rebels took hostages, looted property and burned homes to the ground.

Although most of the victims were Christians, Muslim villagers also suffered at the hands of the MILF renegades. Muslims certainly numbered among the civilians uprooted by the MILF violence.

Not surprisingly, Philippine Muslims denounced the attacks. Adel Tamano, a Muslim scholar and lawyer, called the rampage by MILF rebels “immoral, un-Islamic and un-Christian.”

He worries that the actions of a few Muslim extremists will blacken the name of all Philippine Moros. Tamano said, “The vast majority of Filipino Muslims are law-abiding citizens who want nothing more than to find decent jobs and education for their children.”

Those modest goals, along with the prospects for a lasting peace, have been set back by the violence committed by MILF renegades. The MILF leadership has distanced itself from the two rebel commanders responsible for the attacks. But that does not help the dozens of civilians killed or the thousands uprooted by the violence and facing even more hardship, after decades of economic malaise in the south. (MW/PIA SarGen)